US Senators Oppose looming T – Mobile – Sprint Merger

Nine Democrats in the US Senate, sent letters to the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission asking the agencies to reject T-Mobile’s proposed $26 billion deal to buy Sprint.

The letters addressed to Makan Delrahim, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai urge the regulators to put the brakes on the merger. The senators said the merger is “likely to raise prices for consumers, harm workers, stifle competition, exacerbate the digital divide, and undermine innovation.”

If approved, the merger, announced in April, would reduce the number of national wireless carriers in the US from four to three. In 2011, the FCC and Justice Department rejected AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile, saying the reduction in competition would harm consumers.

“Antitrust regulators around the world have consistently blocked four-to-three mergers in the mobile and telecommunications industry, and those who have allowed such mergers have lived to regret it,” they wrote in their letter to Pai.

T-Mobile USA and Sprint in August 2018 announced an agreement to merge, a deal that would combine the US mobile industry’s third and fourth biggest carriers to create a giant nearly as large as AT&T or Verizon Wireless. The all-stock merger deal would have T-Mobile acquire Sprint for $26 billion worth of stock.

This merger is particularly of interest in Kenya as two telecommunications services providers are seeking to merge as well as indicated here.

The latest data from Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) covering three months to September showed, Airtel the Kenyan subsidiary of Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel, had a market share of 22.3 per cent while Telkom had nine per cent. We are yet to see the decision of the Competition Authority of Kenya and whether it will approve the merger as proposed.

June Okal is a Technology, Media and Telecommunications lawyer. She serves as co-organizer of Nairobi Legal Hackers and blogs for Techweez, a leading technology news digital media platform, and is a fellow of the Internet Society (ISOC), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Equity African Leadership Programme (EALP).

About Nairobi Legal Hackers

NBO Legal Hackers is the Kenyan Chapter of a robust and fast – growing movement of legal hackers in Africa. The Chapter was the first African Chapter of the Legal Hackers Community and has been instrumental in the growth of the community in the region.

A legal hacker is someone who cares about the intersection of law and technology and seeks to improve legal practice through technology while simultaneously using legal skills to promote technological innovation and exploration.